Someone stop me. I can’t seem to help myself. (Each article in this little “favorite/least favorite” series I think will be the last. Then, another suggests itself to me and I’m gone.)

I don’t like bullies. Don’t like them on the playground, in the office, or particularly in the church. I’ve encountered them on the streets and highways, pushing their oversize pickup trucks up to my bumper intending to intimidate me into pulling over and giving them their natural right, the entire highway.

One such person breezed through a four-way-stop intersection on a bike in front of me. When I pulled alongside him a minute later, I called, “Sir, I almost hit you. Don’t you know bikers are supposed to obey traffic laws?” For that, I received a cursing out.

A bully in church throws his weight around, thinks his point of view should carry the day, and expects the pastor and staff to consult him before making any important decision. Such a person has a personality defect and is probably lost spiritually since a characteristic of the born-again has always been a childlike humility and teachableness.

I don’t care for flirts. When a woman begins obviously flirting with me (even if I know it’s a tease or she’s just playing), everything inside me shuts down, the drawbridge goes up, and I’m unreachable until she is gone. This is not to be confused with friendliness, of which I’m all in favor.

The most uncomfortable I have ever been in my own office were the two or three times women came for counsel wearing something like cocktail dresses–split up to here and cut down to there.  This happened so rarely and the events were spaced so many years apart that in each case I was caught completely off guard and was unprepared. I wanted to run away, but it was my office. I felt like asking her to leave and come back when she was fully clothed, but didn’t.  It really puts a pastor in a difficult situation (and not a sexy one, in case anyone wonders; nothing about this is seductive or tempting, just intimidating).

I don’t care for religious smart-alecks, no matter whose side they are on. I’ve sat across the table from a Jehovah’s (false) Witness and endured the smirk on his face and the meanness in his attitude as he tries to skewer me on some point of doctrine. If I had that episode to live over, I would get up and walk out and end that exchange right there. As it was, I tried my best to answer his charges in order to connect with the two spectators who were following this duel. Nothing about it was good.

Sometimes the smirky know-it-all is on our team. He makes a point, laughs at the pretensions of the unbelievers or heretics, and rubs their noses in their failings. Such a person has no idea that it’s possible to win a debate and lose his audience.

Give me a hefty portion of Christlike humility in our team members every time.

I don’t like flatterers.  “Oh, reverend, you are so wonderful. Every message is the best ever. I told my husband I don’t know why you aren’t on television everywhere with messages like this, and as handsome as you are.” Ugh. Let me out of here.

Would it surprise you to know that at one time or other, almost every preacher has to endure this kind of foolishness?

If you are the young assistant pastor, the flatterer says, “Your sermons are so much better than the preacher’s.  I wish you were our pastor.” Woe to the young assistant who eats this garbage up.

“Oh, pastor, I have a hard time listening to your sermon from watching you. You are so handsome!”

Get away quickly, preacher.

My brother Ron says flattery is like perfume in that it smells good but if you swallow the stuff, it will kill you.

I don’t care for the church member who is determined to become my best friend.

New pastors get this a lot. Usually it’s a man, someone with a strong personality but an otherwise dysfunctional existence. For reasons known only to his psychiatrist, he has decided his life would be richer if he were only on a best-friend relationship with his preacher. So, he hovers nearby, bumps into you at every corner, wants to bend your ear over something inconsequential, and keeps inviting you to meet him for lunch or come to his house. It’s sad, actually.

Pastors choose their own best friends, and almost always it’s someone with whom they have lots of outside interests. Often, their best friends will be other pastors or members of former churches. If they have been in the ministry very long, all their defenses go up when a church member wants to move in and become his confidante.

I have a strong aversion to church leaders who love authority, have no heart to serve, and are ignorant of the Scriptures.  Now, that is a lethal combination and makes one wonder how such a one rose to leadership in a church in the first place. But it happens, and I have the scars to prove it.

The church leader who enjoys calling the shots but does not know his Bible will miss many things of major importance in church leadership, including the following…

–He will not know (or care) how much emphasis Scripture puts on unity within the church. Romans 12-14, I Corinthians 1-3, and Ephesians 4 are among the many places the Bible teaches unity.

–Nor will he know or care that the essence of unity is submission to others. (see John 13:1-20 and Ephesians 5:21)  Because of his ignorance and the pulsating carnal spirit within him, submission is the last thing he has in mind.

–And, he will not know what the Word has to say about the role of pastors as shepherds, that they are God-appointed (Acts 20:28), God-anointed, and God’s spokesmen. His attitude is “we voted him in; we can vote him out.” Such a carnal leader is a pastor’s biggest obstacle in giving spiritual leadership to the church.

This may be the same as the last point, but I find myself withdrawing from congregational leaders who have little faith and scoff at those of us who think the church should live by faith. And, just in case you wonder, those “leaders” do exist and some of us pastors have the scars to prove it.

Why were they chosen as leaders and how did they rise to prominence within a healthy congregation?  They were so likeable, talked a good game, sometimes led a Bible class, and camouflaged their true feelings (revealing them only to the preacher during clashes).  When church members get wind of the differences between the pastor and this “wonderful and godly leader,” the pastor gets the short end of the stick since Deacon Smith has been “our friend and Sunday School teacher for many years.”

One way you will recognize leaders who lack faith is by their words:

“A church is a business and should be run as a business.”  Oh? Tell that to the Lord. (See Habakkuk 2:4, Romans 1:17, and Galatians 3:11.) The Lord seems to delight in sending His people ahead when they cannot see the way, calling them to do things for which they have had no preparation, facing enemies with nothing but the “sword of the Lord,” and attempting great feats without any resources other than His presence.

This “most unlikeable” of church members actually has a name. I know him well.

The main reason each of these people are so dislikeable to me is that at one time or other, I have been each of them.  I see traits in myself that are so unChristlike, so unworthy, so destructive to the Lord’s work, that when those same characteristics appear in front of me in the guise of other people, I am repulsed by them.

I am the most unlikeable member of my church.

That’s why I am always on my knees, ever in the Word, and constantly trying to learn how to grow out of this immature caricature of a true disciple of Jesus Christ.

You, too?